A Calgary realtor is accusing Canada Post of not delivering on its promise after hundreds of his marketing materials were found dumped in one woman’s recycling bin.
Jeff Ackerman, a realtor with RE/MAX Mountain View, contacted Global News after a local homeowner contacted him with a surprise find.
“All of a sudden I got a call out of the blue from Alison Scott. She goes, ‘Well I got some of your notepads in the mail.'” Ackerman recalls. “And I’m like, ‘How many do you got?’ And she goes, ‘I got a whole bin full of them out back in my back alley.’ And I was like, ‘Excuse me?'”
Ackerman said he rushed over to find her recycling bin half full — at least — of his personalized notepads advertising his business. Thousands of dollars of marketing literally thrown in the trash.
“It’s not cheap,” he said.
“To get the notepads made up it was approximately $5,500 and then it was another $2,200 in cost for Canada Post to mail them out — so about $7,700 to get these all made up.
“To see them all in the trash, it’s just a little disappointing.”
Scott, a Calgary homeowner and senior, told Global News she too was disappointed. But first she said she was a bit scared.
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“I tried to move the bin to the alley and it was really heavy,” she said. “So I was kind of worried what was in there.”
“I was worried it would be a body in there,” she added.
Scott saw a face staring back at her: Ackerman’s, in a photo on the notepads inside the bin.
“Oh my god. Who would do that?” she questioned.
“I think someone from another area just happened to come down my alley and used my bin,” she said.
She believed it was a mail carrier with Canada Post.
“Nobody is going to pick them up and put them in somebody’s bin. It must have been the delivery.”
Global News reached out to the Crown corporation. We provided photos and tracking numbers for Ackerman’s products.
A Canada Post representative assured us it was investigating and would get back to us once it had any answers.
Ackerman also can’t say 100 per cent it was Canada Post’s doing, but believes a mail carrier dumped his materials in one bin to get rid of them quickly. A move, he said, is not doing any Canadian any service.
“It’s disappointing to see,” he said.
“I think a lot of people across the country rely on Canada Post daily to deliver their mail in a professional manner and unfortunately that did not happen here.”
Ackerman said he is not looking for a refund or any money back from the mail service. He would just like to get his notepads re-printed and have them mailed out again.
He hopes this time they will land in mailboxes, not in recycling bins.
On May 9, Canada Post sent Global News the following statement:
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’re terribly sorry to hear about this isolated incident, which should not have happened. Canadians and Canadian businesses across the country continue to trust Canada Post to securely deliver their mail. It’s a responsibility we take very seriously.
When we learned about this incident, our local operations team immediately began investigating. The local operations team, supported by our security and investigations team, is following up internally to deal with the matter and determine what happened.
Through our established processes, we were able to quickly determine cause and assess responsibility. We also know which areas have received the mail and which haven’t.
We are in touch with this customer and committed to taking necessary steps to address the issue and ensure their mail is delivered.”
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